what falls away
by MyLadyElise
Summary: The sun has come. The mist has gone. We see in the distance our long way home. I was always yours to have. You were always mine. We have loved each other in and out of time. (Maya Angelou). AU after 3.20 "Do Not Go Gentle." Klaroline, Klebekah, Rebekol
1. Prologue

**what falls away**

* * *

Author's note: Title taken from Theodore Roethke's "The Waking." The line reads "What falls away is always. And is near." This story is AU, but basically follows the show through season three, signficant departures from the show storyline begins with 3.20 "Do Not Go Gentle."

Originally posted in 2012 and now undergoing revisions – though I'm not sure anyone remembers this story as it has been so long. Thanks to my original beta Anastasia Dreams.

Side-ships: Stefan/Elena, Rebekah/Kol, hints of Klebekah

Summary: As a child, Caroline is told, "You will be loved by power. You will be greater than a queen." As for Klaus, Esther didn't tell him that his father is Loki, the god of mischief. When Klaroline's love is thwarted just as it begins, Caroline will do anything to get Klaus back. Even if that means involving Loki himself.

* * *

 **Preface**

" _Mightily wove they the web of fate …"  
Sneru þær af afli örlögþáttu …  
~ from Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, in the Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows_

* * *

Fate is what the gods choose; destiny is what you choose to accept. That is what Rebekah had always known, learned growing up in an exiled Norse community, steeped in the pagan myths of their heritage and far, far away from the barely Christianised villages of her parents'childhood.

A simple cut of thread and all is lost. Her mother used to hold up each ragged edge away from the loom and savagely cut part away – as if to illustrate how very little power mortals possessed. Our lives are like the threads of this tapestry woven together, she used to say as she bent across the large, roughly-cut wooden loom, moving her daughter's hands over the shuttle. The human race is a beautiful tapestry, fragile, complex, and entirely dependent upon the weaver. Those are our Norns, weavers of our fate. They decide when our line will end.

She brought the shuttle down, almost savagely. "Don't ever tempt fate or anger the gods, Rebekah."

She wished her mother had taken heed of her own advice.

* * *

 **Prologue: a fortune told**

A/N: Set when everyone is around 11 years old.

" _Maid, not fair is all thy fortune …"  
"Er-at þér at öllu, / alvitr, gefit"  
~ from Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, in the Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows_

* * *

Fate was a romantic term for the very young Caroline. She dreamed of a prince meant just for her, who would take her far away from boring old Mystic Falls. Even farther away than D.C. or Baltimore. Beyond the Atlantic. A beautiful castle and beautiful gowns and a beautiful prince who would love her forever. That was fate for Caroline. She knew it.

She was dreaming of just such a fate, twirling on the swing set of their junior high school. Imagining that her prince might be thinking of her too at that moment, thousands of miles away. At that moment, he bore the name Prince William. It didn't matter that she was only eleven years old and he was ages older. It could happen. One day.

She could totally pull off the role of Princess of Wales.

Bonnie and Elena were talking about the upcoming county fair of which she had no interest. Pigs and cows and pie-eating contests? No thank you.

"Don't you want to go at all, Care?" Bonnie asked, stopping Caroline mid-twirl. Bonnie was _always_ stopping her twirls. Like, couldn't she just talk _while_ she twirled? It certainly made Caroline's mind clearer.

"Not really. Same old rides and creepy workers. All that livestock. No, I'd rather go to King's Dominion. At least it has proper rides and Daddy said he would take us," she paused and smiled smugly. "He's feeling really bad about the divorce and gives me anything I want."

Her friends ignored that later train of thought. They had heard enough of Caroline's wiggling guilt gifts out her parents in the last year.

"We can go to King's any time," Elena said. "The fair is only once a year and everyone in school is going. Might be fun."

Caroline rolled her eyes. "You mean Matt Donovan is going."

Elena blushed and hid her face in her hair. Figured. With Elena, it was always about a boy. Though Matt was the cutest boy in their school, even if he did hang with that obnoxious Tyler Lockwood.

"Maybe," Elena half-admitted. "Anyway, Jeremy really wants to go."

"I know for a fact that a genuine fortune teller is setting a booth this year. I saw the sign on the way to school this morning," Bonnie said, obviously attempting to lure Caroline.

"How do you know that she is genuine?"

Bonnie frowned, a little defensively. "The sign was really cool."

"Well then, we _must_ go, if the sign is really cool," Caroline snarked.

Bonnie ignored her. "It could be fun."

"Or it could be really dull and cheesy."

"Then it would be a good laugh," Elena countered.

"Maybe," Caroline conceded. "I don't know. Remember last year? Tyler and Jeremy got into some weird macho contest of how many times they could ride the Gravitron without puking? Yeah, I don't want to witness that again."

Bonnie and Elena fell into giggles.

"I had to throw away a perfectly good pair of shoes," Caroline protested sternly, before her lip quivered and she joined them giggling.

* * *

In the end, she did go to the fair with Bonnie and Elena. Mostly because she didn't want to go to King's by herself with her father. He'd spend half the time apologising and the other half trying to make her see that the split was _not_ her fault. Really, she only had so much patience for that.

Besides, she was old enough to know that she was not the problem in _that_ marriage.

She had to admit, the sign _was_ really cool. A carved-wooden placard suspended by chain – just like those old shops at Williamsburg. It was painted in beautiful greens and blues, a lady's swirling arms holding up "Madame Skuld." Caroline snorted. As if _that_ was a real name. She had to give her props for dramatic effort though. It certainly conjured images of doom and gloom.

If _Caroline_ were a fortune teller, she would pick a glamourous, romantic name like Tatiana or Esmerelda or Ariel. Certainly not _Skuld_.

They left their tokens with the pimply-faced attendant standing at the door of the richly-embroidered tent. It was pretty impressive too. Like a king's tent from a movie set in the Middle Ages, Persian rugs and throw pillows everywhere and dim candlelight. In the middle stood a smallish-round table, covered in two or three cloths and a fringed piano throw. There was even a crystal ball resting on a gilt platform. Just like a movie. The Madame certainly knew how to set the scene.

She did not immediately appear and Caroline began to wonder if she would appear in puff of smoke just for the dramatic effect.

Instead, she simply came in by the back door. Like a regular person.

She did not look anything like Caroline thought a county fair fortune teller would look. She was neither old nor plump. She did not wear a turban or ridiculously large gold hoop earrings. She was very young with shiny chesnut hair braided into an elborate knot at her neck, and wore milky white moonstones in her ears and around her neck, and clothes of a vaguely hippy fashion – a long, flowy red skirt and black top, a black, beaded sarong tied around her waist that jingled like coins knocking against each other as she moved towards them. She looked like a heroine from the romance novels that Caroline stole from her grandmother's house.

She even carried herself like a princess, deliberate elegant steps, sternly upright carriage that Caroline's grandmother would have envied. Like a ballerina. But fiercer.

"Welcome," she said in a slightly accented voice. It was a beautiful accent, clipped notes that Caroline had never heard. "I am Madame Skuld, but you most tell me your names."

After following Bonnie and Elena around rides and games booths, stalking Matt Donovan, bitchy Caroline returned. "If you're, like, a real fortune teller, shouldn't you know?"

Cool grey eyes snapped towards her and the lady took a step nearer, curious and amused. Caroline held her head high, even though she was just a _bit_ intimidated. The woman was scary.

"My dear, that is not a fortune told. It is your life's force that I read. Now tell me, what is your name?" Her tone was hard, as though she was used to deference and even though she admired the girl's pluck, she would brook no more insolence.

Really, quite absurd for a county fair fortune teller, Caroline thought. Still, she answered, "Caroline."

The lady smiled. "See? What that so hard? Manners should always be observed." She sounded just like Grandma Forbes. Bonnie and Elena followed suit, introducing themselves. "We shall sit now," she said, gesturing towards the table and taking a seat for herself.

The three girls followed, a little nervously. They had only expected a hokey bit of fun. Nothing like this strange young woman with her ancient airs. They looked at one another, and Elena nodded towards Caroline as if to suggest that she make the first move. She was the bold one to talk back after all. Caroline huffed and took the seat nearest the lady. If they were to be _babies._

"You would like to go first, bold Caroline?" said the lady. She held out her hand, palm-up, resting it on the table. Her fresh, woodsy scent followed her movement. Not unpleasant if unusual.

"Yes she would," Bonnie prompted and pushed at Caroline's shoulder.

"Bonnie!" Caroline scolded, "ssh!" She turned back and defiantly held out her hand palm up, copying the Madame Skuld's gesture.

The lady grasped her hand, pulling it closer to her and ran a finger along Caroline's palm. Caroline started at the coldness unlike anything she had felt before on a person – even when she went skiiing with Jeremy and Elena in Colorado and wetted her mittens in a snow fight last year. She was almost frost-bitten and it hurt as the feeling came back. This was different. She couldn't explain why, but she shuddered as the Madame enclosed her hand in both her own and closed her eyes.

"W-what are you doing? A palm read?" she asked.

The grey eyes snapped open. "Not quite," was all she would say and closed her eyes again. Caroline glanced at her friends whose wide-eyed stares met her own. They must have felt it too. What if she was a serial killer? Liz was always telling Caroline to stay away from strangers. They could be serial killers. What if Caroline met her death simply because Elena wanted to stalk Matt Donovan?

Madame Skuld's eyes snapped open again, staring straight into Caroline's eyes. She tried to turn and tug her hand away, but the lady protested, "No, let me see your soul."

She was totally going to die in this tacky, overdone tent and it was all Elena's fault.

"Miss Caroline, what a world awaits you," Madame Skuld said.

Caroline's heart beat in her throat. "What do you mean?"

"You will be loved by power. You will go where none before was allowed. You will be greater than a queen."

"What?" Caroline asked again, her hand slack in the lady's grip.

"You must listen carefully."

How could she not listen after all that dramatics? Even if it wasn't true, it was something. It wasn't like the fortune teller at Coney Island that one time who was vague and saw "much happiness" and that Caroline's soul was like a sunbeam or some other nonsense. Everyone knew that Caroline was like a sunbeam. Her father told her all the time.

"His name is Niklaus, but you will know him as Klaus. He will come into your life like any terror you've dreamed. But he will be true and you will be steady and you will shake the earth for him."

Okay … that was scarily specific.

"What do you mean 'shake the earth'?" Caroline did not like the almost urgency in the woman's voice. It froze the blood in her veins.

"That my dear, I cannot tell you. These are things forbidden. But there is great sorrow for you and great love but you have a role to play in the fate of this realm. But you must trust me; in the future look back to this moment and trust me. Do you understand?"

"Are you for real?"

Madame Skuld smiled and released her. "I tell you what I see. Our fates are decided the moment we are born, bold Caroline. It is up to you to believe and to accept."

Well, that was just crazy. Who talked like that?

Caroline looked back at her friends who seemed just as stunned. Maybe that was just a bit overdone.

Unfortunately, Caroline said this aloud, and the fortune teller frowned in displeasure. She seemed to suck all the air out of the room with the furrow of her brow. "You'd do well to believe miss. I do not tangle with lives here. I tell truth and judge who are worthy."

What the hell?

"Who are you?" Bonnie asked, her voice shaking. She had grown up in stories of witches and Druids and rituals as though they had been fairy tales. But they had been truths once.

"I am Skuld. I am that which shall be. With my sisters Urðr and Verðandi, I rule the fates of humankind, of gods, and all supernatural creatures. Someday you will remember." She reached for Bonnie's hand. "You have such power, young one, and we have need of you. Someday you will break the barrier of what is and what was."

She turned to Elena with something like pity. "Love will tear you apart, my dear. Be careful with it."

Then, she rose up and seemed to draw power with her in the movement. Caroline couldn't move, could barely breathe. Her wits had all been scattered. Things like this just didn't happen. This woman was crazy, right? She had to be crazy.

Madame Skuld drew all their eyes into her sight at once, without the girls ever being aware of the movement. "You will remember one day. Unfortunately for you, it is not today."

With a grand sweep of her arm, the young woman disappeared, leaving in her wake a disheveled, bony older woman who sat down with a thud.

Caroline blinked and sat back in her chair, exhausted and bewildered. Like a fog had descended within the tent and seeped into her brain. Wasn't there something she should grasp while she could? But it was already beyond her reach, the last syllables slipping away, the impression less than vague. It evaporated before her like a plume of smoke, before she could even react and touch the vapours.

What had this little old woman to do with the uneasiness that settled into her young soul like some ancient weight?

She glanced at Bonnie, then Elena, and recognised the same confusion. "What did she just say?"

Elena answered, "I think she said that you would marry a prince."

A prince? That couldn't be right, could it? Still, not bad for a county fair fortune teller. Whatever, she wanted to get far away from this creepy, ratty tent.

Caroline turned back to the old lady and shook her hand with a strained smile. She swallowed a giggle as the woman's turbain was now lop-sided and in threat of falling right off. "It was really nice to meet you and thank you for the fortune. You might want to check your hair."

The teller nodded appreciatively, though she seemed befuddled as well. "Thank you, my dear," she patted the turban absent-mindedly. "I will."

Bonnie and Elena were already up and heading towards the entrance. Elena left a small tip for the lady who really seemed overcome. Caroline followed, but glanced back once more to see the teller shaking her head and pressing a hand to her heart. Poor dear, those long fair hours must be tough for someone her age.

"You were right, Caroline," Elena admitted once they were outside. "Completely bogus. We didn't get anything specific. She seemed kind of out of it."

"Yeah, like she had dementia or something," Caroline added.

"She said that you would get the boy your heart desired, Elena," Bonnie asserted, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively and gestured towards Matt who was chasing Tyler Lockwood down the path of booths. They passed under a sign that now read "Madame Rosamond's Fortunes." It swung with the slight breeze that made gooseflesh prickle on Caroline's arms. That couldn't be right either, and neither could Elena's fortune.

The teller's words were curiously foggy already. She could only remember that she would be loved.

But there was something else, wasn't there?


	2. Chapter 1: the gold god goaded me

**Author's note: Thanks to my original beta Anastasia Dreams.**

 **This chapter takes place just before 3.20 "Do Not Go Gentle."**

 **Chapter 1: the gold god goaded me**

The gold god goaded me …  
His heat corroded me  
~ Christabel LaMotte's poetry from AS Byatt's _Possession_

* * *

 _The most ordinary moments leave no discernable trace. We do not count them, take no heed. A run to the store, a bright new dress, a moment's anger. Fleeting. Yet, they move us towards our fate all the same, and sometimes too quickly. We look back muddled to find that, after all, one moment has left us a new world._

 _Two people met on a sunny afternoon in late spring and never afterwards mentioned it. Though it would be wrong to suggest they were not affected all the same. This is how it was …_

* * *

She took a risk in coming all this way alone, unannounced and unexpected. But something had to be done, acknowledged, and she wanted no one to talk her out of it – or worse, accompany her. Tyler knew too much already, her friends knew too much already – even though Caroline was fairly certain that there was nothing to be known. Except for the picture that she had kept. Foolishly. It was the root of her present troubles. _He_ was the root of all her troubles in one form or another.

Klaus.

Tyler back and un-Sired. She should have been able to celebrate in peace. Her one dream come true in months of horror.

She had arranged Rebekah's distraction with Matt for that very reason. Pretended to quibble over a dance's theme so that she could sneak off into the woods for Tyler. Well, not quite that reason. She had not then known that Tyler was unSired. She only wanted a bit of time with her boyfriend, uninterrupted. A romantic reunion. She deserved it and she needed a bit of happiness.

How else could she cope? Be strong? Everyone expected her to be strong. Elena was, even when she lost her parents and Jenna. Strength was a necessity.

Tyler fighting the Sire bond had been her hope of happiness when her father died. She dwelt on memories of his kiss when she cried alone in her bed at night and puzzled over Klaus's sudden interest. Why she couldn't shake the Original Hybrid.

Everytime she closed her eyes, she saw Tyler's confused and pained expression as he picked up Klaus's drawing and questioned her. And left her.

Stupid Klaus and his stupid drawing. It mocked her.

Honesty – yeah, she was a real pillar of honesty.

She didn't even know why she kept the picture.

Even when Klaus was not there, he still fucked up everything for her.

She was rather surprised to find no visible hybrids lurking about Klaus's grounds. Though she could smell them in the shadows, earthy like the forest, like Tyler had been when she pressed him to her. No locked doors either. So much for his famed paranoia. Although, she supposed that a locked door would not be much of a deterent to any supernatural creature. And mortals were no threat.

Her heels echoed, clip, clip, across marble as she wandered about the foyer and halls, peeking into different rooms, cautiously saying his name. All her bravado quieted within this cavernous building which seemed more like a museum. A long Finnish tapestry, thread-bare and dulled stretched across a gallery, medieval and probably long ago stolen from some prince's castle. Various Norse or Viking scenes almost bleeding together. Or Caroline supposed. She did not know much about such things, but it was strangely arresting, and one of the figures, a young lady with still-chestnut hair was eery. Liked she watched all who gazed on her. She sat beneath a tree, weaving with two other young women. Caroline ran her finger along the loom, the bumpy lines of the weave more prominent for having been worn away through the years. It must have been magnificent once. All bright colours, smooth and bumpy all at once. Full expressions in each figure's eyes.

"Those are the Fates, love," said a voice behind her, quiet, pensive.

"Oh." She dropped her hand to her side, guilty for having been caught touching such a treasure. It should be under glass in a museum. It was weird that she could not seem to retain her anger at that voice, different than his others. She had heard so many voices from him, each hypnotic in their way, chilling, carressing, even calming. No one used their voice like Klaus. Like a weapon.

She would not turn to him. She gave him too much already. Even if he didn't know it.

She could hear the ice cubes tinkling against his glass behind her. Drinking so early in the day? God, she hoped it was alcohol. She could almost feel his arm at her back, though he had not touched her. If she leaned back, just a little, she imagined that she would feel the cool glass, tempering the nerves that flared at his nearness. She should not be so affected. She should not. Except that she found that her thoughts did not wander around him, seemed anchored on him, on where he was, what he was doing. It could have been because he was the enemy still, and her vampiric instinct to flee for survival. It could have.

His hand glided over the figures she had just examined.

Too, too close.

Why wasn't she fleeing?

Where was her survival instinct?

"We called them Norns," he continued, pronouncing the last word in a peculiar accent, harsher than his typical English. "Three sisters, goddesses in the old world, but not like those Greek deities who interfere so much in the lives of mortals. They stand above all, immortal and removed."

She nodded without knowing what to say. She hadn't really said anything to him at all since he appeared behind her, catching her roaming around his home uninvited. Wasn't he curious or angry?

Still, she certainly wasn't going to goad him when she was in the wrong. She needed the moral high ground for that.

"They sit beneath the Yggdrasil, the ash tree from which the whole world and heavens spring, and dispense the fates of all mortals and immortals," he said with a smile, "in Norse mythology."

She did turn to him then, reflecting an impish smile of her own. "So that is why a tree is so dangerous that it can slay the most powerful creatures on this earth?"

"It is just a mythology."

She could not look away when his eyes bore into hers so solemnly, guarded and vulnerable all at once. Sometimes she wondered if he appeared thus for anyone else. Except his sister. Perhaps. When she did not turn away again, his lips turned upwards, like a smile, but not quite. Yet it transformed his whole face, made him almost boyish. Like he had smiled the night he showed her the painting and he had offered her Rome and Paris and Tokyo. No one else could smile like Klaus, she thought, or should smile like him. It was dangerous. "Do you believe in anything more powerful than yourself, Klaus?"

"I did once."

"Did you?"

"But it has been a long time, love." He cocked his head to the side, considering her for a moment. Almost peaceful. It was strange that she should have these peaceful moments with him, when she had almost none with anyone else. When her anger just evaporated. Poof. She wasn't even sure if they were talking of the same things. He had a curious, determined way of turning things back to herself.

The weight of his gaze was just too much, and she didn't want to falter so she turned back to the tapestry again, glancing at the figures beneath the tree. The stories that humans made to understand the world always fascinated her, even when she was a human. And he had seen it all – all these stories, mythologies, rising and falling. When Klaus was a boy, these ladies had been as real to him as any Christian saint she had studied in confirmation classes. Perhaps more than anything else, this struck her. Whole worlds had risen and fallen in his lifetime.

How could he possibly want anything of her?

The question choked, for however much she wanted to deny she could not help being flattered by his attention. That such a creature might fancy her. It was never her. Except with him.

Instead, she fingered the strangely clad figures again. His hand moved above her own, touching the long, golden hair of the standing lady, "This," he said, taking her movement as a gesture to continue. His voice was husky, as though pleased that she wanted to hear more from him. "This is Urðr, and she is the eldest. She guards the past, but it is she who weilds the most power, for the past is always tied to the present and the future. The past is never really gone." His hand slid down, barely brushing her own to the well at the sisters' feet. "She tends the well that nourishs the world's ash."

When he spoke, she could almost believe that it was truth and not mythology. He spoke the names so well, in another accent strangely familiar, though she had never heard it before. Like he slipped into something else, a tongue more familiar than English. Or had been once.

"And she is?" Caroline asked, pointing to the middle sister, staring straight ahead, the one whose's eyes seemed to follow the gazer.

"Verðandi," he answered. Caroline nearly shivered at the gutteral rythmic sound of the name. "She is the kindest of the sisters," he continued, "for her only concern is the present. She winds the thread that Urðr spins, the life of every being."

His own hand lingered on the veiled figure to the right, gazing at some unknown point, and seeming to caress the shears in her hand. "Skuld is the most dangerous. She is the future, and it is she who cuts the thread of life."

"Well, that seems kind of random."

Klaus smiled again. "Not always. She judges the worthy. As a Valkyrie too, she flies over every battlefield to collect the souls of warriors to dwell in Valhalla."

"So that is where the powerful go when they die?"

He nodded in assent.

"Even monsters?"

"Even monsters," he replied softly, gazing at her profile, almost as though willing her to turn to him again. But she resisted the pull. For a while yet, she would. "She is the most beautiful as well."

"Why should that matter?"

"Why else would a soldier so willingly follow a woman into the afterlife?" he said in some amusement.

Caroline stared at the figure for a long moment. What an unusual and harsh name after the beauty of her sisters' names. And strangely familiar. She could almost hear another peculiarly accented tone, _I am Skuld_. She touched the figure's long veil, marvelling at the intricate markings like they spoke to her.

She started at Klaus's hand at her back, and snapped her eyes open, unaware that they had even closed. When she turned around, he was much further away than she expected and taking a long swallow of an amber-coloured liquid. Observing her with candid yet hooded eyes.

Damn him. She was supposed to be angry with him, not asking for art history lessons.

See? This is why she avoided him. She could not concentrate otherwise.

"You!" she exclaimed, entirely aware that she appeared psychotic in her sudden wrath. Well, to him sudden wrath.

He only raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

"I am merely enjoying a quiet afternoon at home, love."

She scoffed, arms crossed and defensive. Klaus never merely did anything.

And just like that, he was guarded again. "Is there a reason for your visit today, Caroline?"

"You are ruining my life!"

He nearly rolled his eyes. "Let me remind you that you snuck into my house today. Apparently to stare at a tapestry."

"You've broken into my house plenty of times!"

"It's not breaking in when I have an invite, sweetheart."

"One invite, Klaus. One. Not a standing invitation."

He moved towards her again, pulling her in when she needed to keep pushing him away. She stood still and would not take a backward step. She would not be intimidated. She hated his eyes like that, solemn and cold, like the killer he was. "Are you, then, rescinding my invitation?" he asked.

"As if I had the power to do that."

He merely brushed past her and continued down the gallery.

Caroline huffed and started to follow. He could not walk away from her. She was supposed to walk away from him. That is how it worked between them. She came all this way to yell at him.

He swung open a heavy mahogany door, but at least he did not slam it shut behind him.

"We were having a nice moment there, love, and you just had to ruin it," he said, pouring himself another drink and sinking into a chair by the unlit fireplace.

She remained by the door, leaning against a table and needing the distance between them. She could not afford to lose her anger again. "Me? You ruin everything."

"Aren't you a bit dramatic, Caroline?"

"Are you serious? Have you met you?"

He only glared at her and rigidly took another drink.

"You don't leave romantic gifts and drawings for anyone to find, Klaus!"

"So that is your problem?"

"Yes that is my problem! Among many others. Tyler found it, you miscreant," she nearly shouted and then paled. That might have been something to keep to herself. She should have said her mom. She definitely should have said her mom. Damn.

"Tyler, you say?"

"I meant my mom. My mom found it."

"I don't think so, love." He rose again and moved towards her. She inched a bit further away. "That is … interesting."

She stared at him for a long moment, but she could not read his careful features. Ever since the night he saved her life, she had felt like she could read him. But then, it was because he showed so much to her, wasn't it? Whether he wanted to or not. Not like he could see inside her soul, into the things she most wanted.

"I burnt all the drawings I made of you," he said. Emotionless.

She swallowed and tried not to look at the knife which lay so close to his hand. She did not think that he would hurt her. But he was impulsive, sometimes. It was never good to have Klaus so near to weapons.

"Do you know why, Caroline?" he continued. Emotionless and so still. Not frantic. No gleeful, sadistic teasing. Or even vulnerability. Just still. And it frightened her more than anything else in her life. Good Lord, what had she unleashed upon Tyler?

"No?" she ventured.

"Because of you, ironically. Bekah would appreciate that. She loves irony." Caroline hated the brief smile at his sister's name.

"Because you betrayed me."

"I didn't," she began to protest.

"You did," he insisted with some finality. "Do you know what I normally do with people who betray me, Caroline?" Again emotionless.

"You kill them?"

Why wasn't she fleeing?

Where was her survival instinct?

"Yes, but not before I torture them. You see," his voice lowered, like a demon in a nightmare, "I like to see their will to live slowly fade away until they can't even beg to be killed."

This was true. It wasn't just a scare tactic. Caroline saw the joy flicker in his gaze – amber flashing over blue as the wolf within him delighted at the memories of torture and slaughter long past. How many people had looked into this face as they died?

She gulped and could not look away from dagger lying next to his hand. She wondered how it would feel twisting into her heart. Except he would need no weapon. She had not feared him since the night she took his blood, but she feared him now. She ventured a brief glance to see his features crumble just a little.

"But I can't. I can't with you, Caroline. I just can't turn it off." In a flash he picked up the dagger and threw it into the wall, embedded to its hilt.

She yelped.

" _You_ have ruined _my_ life, Caroline. A thousand years and hardly anything touched me. Anyone. My brother is dead. My mother is out there waiting to kill us all. And I can't turn it off!"

She really did not like the turn in this conversation. She could not think how it would end, and she wanted none of the influence that he hinted. She only wanted to be left alone, to as normal life as she could manage for a while yet.

But when she looked into his eyes, blue and just a bit watery, she could sense the vibration in every limb, the effort to keep himself together, to avoid any explosion of emotion. This was the Klaus she could almost see at times and the reason that she kept his drawing by her bed. But she could not say this or explain this in any sensible way. And he would not want her to. It was not pity, though he would take it as such. Only a sense that she understood, that she could understand him. And it flared within her so strongly that she thought her heart might beat again.

She almost took a step closer, despite the danger of his erratic temperament and that he blamed her for everything. At least they had that in common. The ruin of one another. If she had any sort of sense, she would run away. But she had not with Tyler and she could not now – and this was a greater danger. He could snap her in more ways than one.

Except, sometimes, she could still taste his blood and it seemed to temper any flare of common sense concerning him.

All the while, she had been moving towards him and she did not even know it, and was startled when her hand touched the arm hanging by his side. Just the fingertips, a small graze, but she had never touched him willingly first. But he did not move away, seemingly fascinated by the expressions flitting across her face. What were they, she wondered?

"Get out, Caroline," he said, firmly and quite suddenly.

"What?" she sputtered.

He closed his eyes. "Just leave," without his earlier rancour.

She stepped back as though his skin burned her and stared confusingly into his once again closed-off expression.

Too, too much, she thought. Too much and too close. She could not keep doing this.

At least he had the sense to dismiss her when she got too close.


	3. Chapter 2: mists of our ancient past

**Chapter 2:** **the mists of our ancient past**

 **Author's note: the chapter title comes from an ancient anonymous poem called "The Doom of Odin." This chapter is Klebekah heavy, but there is Klaroline too.**

 **Set just before the 1920s Decade Dance in 3.20 "Do Not Go Gentle."**

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What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. ~ Julian Barnes, _The Sense of an Ending_

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 _To say that the world – that time – stops when you are daggered would be an inaccuracy. It moves on around you, quickly, harshly, negligent of your own absence, though you have no notion of its movement or measurement._

 _It is a long, still sleep._

 _But it is a curious thing._

 _Because your mind keeps whirling to make its own world in the wake of the real one's abandonment. As though its says, well then, I don't need you. I can do well enough on my own. Memory takes up the slack, filling your mental world with long forgotten images and scenes, reclaiming a lost world. Reliving another time. As though Odin himself has sent his ravens Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, to people your world, and to guard against the loneliness of the dagger. There is a kinship there, with the old, old world, with heartbeats long stilled, beliefs long dead, parchments yellowed, heavy, intricate gowns and earthy damp smells foreign to this modern world. Your half-forgotten mother tongue, harsh and liquid all at once. You wouldn't know it now, but in the mental makeup of your ephemeral world, it is woven in the fabric of sounds._

 _Except these memories don't always follow the script of history._

* * *

She could not feel the cold, rough floor nor the damp air or even the fly that buzzed around her face, landing once or twice on her cheek, already detecting the faint sweetness of decay. Nor could she discern the deafening silence, broken only by the distant hum of cars passing at intervals down the isolated road. Where she lay alone, disregarded and abandoned by her mother once she had finished using Rebekah's body for her own purposes.

Unconscious. She hoped that Nik or someone would discover and free her. Surely Nik would not be fooled by their mother for so long. He would notice, eventually. He should notice.

But as always when she lay daggered (and she had been fortunate in that respect considering Kol and Finn), her mind drifted lazily along its own path. Sometimes directed by her own inclination to relive happier times, beautiful times when she was cherished as a princess in the most extravangant courts of Europe. And sometimes, the very worst memories intruded. When she had been helpless and human.

So, she did not notice her immediate surroundings. Instead, her world become the lush, dense marshlands of Virginia a thousand years ago, when a small Viking settlement called Vinland thrived for a while.

Rebekah remembered the sun breaking through heavy, grey clouds the day of Henrik's funeral barge. Burning through the mists of the marsh and warming her cheek negligently. Cruel Søl, cruel sun, didn't she know that it was a day of death?

She could feel it as if it were yesterday, the misting rain continuing in defiance of Søl, weeping all over the long grass and fallen ash leaves, sticking mud to their leather soles as they trod, mutely, down the marsh path. Henrik laid out on a bier, raised high above her brothers' shoulders. One pale arm exposed beneath cloth, dumbly clutching the bow he'd only lately been allowed to carry. It was a man's weapon, their father said, not a child's toy, even as he taught them all how to draw back an arrow in protection. How proud Henrik had been to take down a deer on only his second outing. He'd even helped Mother clean the pelt, which he wore as a badge of honour. Like Ullr, he'd say, his hero among all the gods. Even above Thor. Not even a small practice sword could displace the bow named for his hero. His very own, Henrik's first bow. A rite of passage. And Finn had made it especially for him, only him.

Rebekah had been so jealous. Five years younger and he had his own bow. When Kol had turned twelve and received his own bow straight from Father, Mother had only given her a sickle knife to help prepare potions and clean game for meals and hides for clothing. Kol gloated for days and whizzed arrows past her as she strode through the common, a safe distance, but close enough to set her teeth on edge and elicit frequent scoldings from Mother. Rebekah had pouted and snarked to Niklaus over and again and when Henrik got his bow, Nik carved one just for her. He'd even carved her name into it, along with intricate symbols of protection, and the outline of a Valkyrie. She had called it Brunhild after her favourite Valkyrie, who'd been fierce and strong and defied even Odin to love a mortal man.

No one else had a bow so beautiful and elegant. Everyone admired the workmanship and even the village girls wanted one too. But Nik carved only for her. Not even Tatia, the village whore, got a single carved token from him.

She had loved that old bow more than all the jewels and gowns that followed, though it had been lost in the centuries, in their run from Mikael, along with most of their humanity and everything that tied them to that old settlement by the Bay.

Except, she could still remember, whether conscious or not, how the carvings felt when she ran her fingers along the curve. The strength as she pulled back an arrow, shooting targets into an ash tree with Henrik and Kol, and even Elijah, hanging the bow up on the wooden board of the great room of their hearth-hall. All their bows and swords displayed together, Mikael's larger, more prominent, closest to the hearth and casting monstrous shadows in the firelight.

They had been a family then.

Rebekah could trace the absolute moment of their demise to Henrik's. He hadn't seemed to be the glue that had held them together, but perhaps he had been. The beloved. The golden child. Beautiful, sweet, clever beyond his years. The favourite of everyone.

Little wonder, then, that Rebekah met this day again and again in her dreams.

No song, no tune, no cry had ever deafened her mother's wails through the centuries. Bent over and keeling like a wild animal. Her mother could hardly follow Henrik to his final berth.

Afterwards, she had been too different. Had not seemed to be Mother at all. Her gaze was always fixed somewhere else, deep within herself, and keeping some distance from them, even as she prepared their final rebirth behind all their backs. Henrik had taken all her kindness with him to Asgard, or Valhalla or wherever the Norns deemed his fate.

He should have been buried in a proper mound, where Rebekah could have lain flowers and chanted hymns and made sacrifices to Hel for his safe rebirth to a higher station. Maybe she could have prayed him into a prince, safe behind the stone and wooden walls of a castle in the faraway land of her mother's birth in the Danelaw. He should have been a prince, precocious and generous, outshining them all in acts of martial courage. He should have been. Not mowed down by a monster beyond the pale of all proper civilisation.

Except she had been overruled. As usual. Her voice held no weight. Silly, young girl. What could she possibly know of sacred matters?

Henrik was not a child to be given to Hel for rebirth, her father reasoned, but a young warrior of promise. He deserved the barge of a fallen warrior. He was meant to take his place with Freya in Fólkvangr or Odin in Valhalla, to dine and grow hearty for the final battle, to fight by the side of his heroes and his gods in Ragnarök at the end of the world. He deserved that honour. He was meant for it since birth, as all Mikael's sons were meant to be warriors. As every male in their family had fallen nobly in battle for as long as anyone could remember.

But, Henrik was a babe. A child playing games, still running through the forest with the village boys, playing at being Ullr and Thor.

Playing at being grown up had gotten him killed.

Henrik deserved more than eternal battle in Valhalla. Sacrilege, yes, but he did. Honour be damned. He deserved a life, his own way, and the chance to take a bride in handfast, and to grow old with a bevy of children to carry his name. A half dozen little Henriksons. Then, and only then, a noble death.

He wasn't going to get that carried to Valhalla under the calculating stare of a Valkyrie.

Against her will, Rebekah had woven the sticks and kindle for Henrik's barge, humming and chanting the sacred rites with her mother and Ayana. She could not help slipping in a silent prayer to Hel to be kind and give him life again.

Back then, her tongue did not trip over the complicated vowels of her first language. Liquid, easy, sacred _dǫnsk tunga_ , the old Norse, the dozen words for honour, a dozen more for snow, all kinds of snow that they'd never seen in the new world, all kinds of names, more names than you could ever use. Back then, there had been names for everything, every nuance. When she had first learned the Saxon word, before it was ever English, she'd felt strangled, tongued-tied. Just different enough to place all her emotions at a distance from the language meant to express them. She had tried to hold on to the mother tongue for as long as possible, but with their return to an old world they'd never known, it had faded almost entirely, until only the most important words remained. Like the word for brother, " _bróðir_ ," similar enough, though it meant more than family member or comrad in battle. There was a sense of belonging to, which she had kept, clung to.

Nik would always be _bróðir_ , rather than brother. Just as he was Nik, rather than Niklaus or Klaus. Just as when she called him brother, aloud for anyone to hear, and she knew that he heard that almost slurring _bróðir_ instead.

Nik lurked behind her, staring mutely ahead. She remembered that he'd hardly said a word since she'd seen him hovered over the crumpled, bloody body. She couldn't think of him as Henrik. In a thousand years she could not connect him to that silent shell. He was already far beyond them all, but Rebekah knew that for Niklaus, Henrik was still trapped in the horrific pain of his final moments.

If she could, she would draw that pain into herself and tear it apart with all the love that she bore her Niklaus. If only to spare Nik even a part of its intensity. If she could. She was a woman, she could bear it better. The gods knew that the greater share of pain in life belonged to woman. Birth and death belonged to them alone. She could take it.

She'd take the actions too. The sneaking out, carrying home the mangled body. The shouting, the beating that would surely follow once Mikael's shock snapped. She'd take it from Nik. If she could.

Disregarding a stern look from her mother, Rebekah left them to their task and wound herself around her living brother, resting her head on his shoulder. Oh Freya, she thought, let him heal. She never stopped thinking, chanting it in her head in all the centuries that followed. Just let him heal.

But to Nik, she only said, "Bróðir."

He flinched at the word, almost imperceptibly, though Rebekah had felt it in her arms. The almost yearning and the pain. He flinched for years afterwards with that word.

Even now, her whole body immobile and lying cold and abandoned on a floor in Mystic Falls, she could still feel the pain in him. When he stiffened and stared at her with crystal eyes and turned her away with words he could not mean, she still remembered him vulnerable and human. When he needed her above anyone else. When he still needed her, though he could not now say the words. But he had once, and it lived within her even when she was daggered and he'd never noticed that she had been possessed.

But the thing was, Henrik's death had killed something inside them and between them too. They were irretrievably broken and she was sorrier for that than for their entire broken family unit. It was another reason why she returned again and again to this memory. Had lived it over a thousand times in her ninety years in a coffin, and again now. As if she could repair the moment that the crack began.

She remembered following him down to the edge of the waters, staring at his back, the tension in his muscles. He'd still not said a word. Not to her, not to Elijah, not to Tatia who'd clumsily offered her comfort the morning that they'd dressed Henrik for his barge.

Rebekah stood with her mother and Ayana and the other elder women in all their woven finery, chanting loudly over her mother's wails. She had watched them lower the small bier onto the barge and bit her lip at the soft sway of Henrik's limp body with the lapping waters. His arm fell loosely by his side and his bow slipped, threatened to fall into the water, and she thought, no. He will need that in the world to come. He would want something familiar in that strange place. She had nearly stepped forward to right it when Nik darted forwards again to catch the bow and secure it, his hand lingering on Henrik's lifeless arm.

When he moved back again, he caught her eye briefly, and her own arm darted forwards to graze his, but he moved away. He took a torch from Elijah's outstretched arm and stood with the other men.

The women with their tokens and cloth, looked so much smaller (though none the less powerful) than her father and brothers and Henrik's friends with their torches blazing ominously above their heads.

Their village priestess Ayana, a völur of the highest skill, read the sacred rune as Finn carried Henrik's sacrificed wolf pup and laid him on the barge with her brother. Even in death, he seemed poised to protect his master, tucked into the boy's side, as though perfectly content to give up life for him. At least he will have Sven, Rebekah thought, at least that. Still, she shuddered when her mother brushed the wooden tablet of runes with the pup's blood and carefully laid it at both their feet. The wood glinted wetly in the morning sun. A deliberate, desperate plea to Odin for Henrik's passage.

Rebekah could not help wondering if he were not already gone. Or did he wait to see the rituals, to see which way to go? Towards Valhalla? Was some Valkyrie already waiting, tugging his soul away from them forever?

She wished had lived in the old days when the gods made themselves visible. When she might have seen the Valkyrie, just to see if he was gone or not. She could not say goodbye to the thing lying on the barge waiting to be burnt up. What made him Henrik was already gone.

She did not look at the face when she laid down her final ash branch by his side and took a step further back into the shadows. Instead, she watched Nik do the same and lean against a moss-covered tree. He looked downwards to his feet, did not meet anyone's eyes, not even her own. Not even when she willed it.

Far too broken. Everyone was far too broken.

In the old tongue, she would have said _brǫkun_ , because it meant clashing too. That is what it felt like, two pieces broken apart and clashing against one another. Like in Mystic Falls when he didn't need her and didn't notice her. A long shudder escaped her in despair. She could already feel it crumbling within her. What they were.

She ignored a rustling of leaves beside her and a damp earthy scent faintly carried by the breeze. One of the old village women. They spent their days up to their elbows in soil, preserving herbs, preparing potions and other things to sell to the villagers when their men were gone. She avoided them at these times. They were too full of wisdom when you wanted to cry.

"He was a beautiful babe when he was born and he would have been a beautiful man," said the woman, matter of factly. No false sympathy laced her voice.

Rebekah nodded in assent.

"A good warrior," she continued.

Rebekah did not respond. She didn't want to talk about Henrik yet, not in the past tense, and certainly not with a woman who seemed too unfamiliar. She'd never been ready to talk about him in the past tense. So, she kept her eyes trained up Nik, pointedly ignoring any conversation. He did not move, though she could tell that he was listening carefully to everything chanted or spoken. He was observant that way. Stilled when he really gave his attention, his whole body invested. It made him the best hunter in their family.

He brooded and took everything in, kept it too close to his chest, because it was safer that way. She would have darted to him just to stand by his side or touch him because she could, but she knew, as well, that he would not want that weakness in front of anyone else. Especially Mikael and Mother when he'd been blamed for this death already.

So, she willed him to feel it in her stare. Even now in her memory, she willed him to feel it. As if could have made the difference in the centuries that followed.

"Oh my dear girl," said the woman by her, "you won't reach him that way."

Out of the corner of her eye, Rebekah saw the woman settled in beside her, arranging her skirts, and found, to her surprise, that she was not an elder woman at all. She was young, as young as Rebekah, though her eyes were heavy like the elder women, too full of the past and wisdom. Rebekah suddenly knew what her mother meant when all the young widows trodded through the common, lugging children and wares when their men had been lost in raids. Their ancient eyes. Except Rebekah could not remember any raid deaths preceding Henrik's demise, nor did she remember the woman standing by her, dressed in darkened weeds and a veil covering her long braids. In their village, everyone knew everybody from all the settlements around.

She looked at Rebekah too knowingly, as though she could read everything that she was in the old days and everything she had been since she'd fled Vinland with her brothers.

"The past is a curious thing, isn't it?" she continued. "Memory makes it seem to live again."

Rebekah could only stare, wondering if another vampire had somehow invaded her memory again. Except since Damon, she had been so careful to be guarded. Even so, no stranger could pick such an intimate, painful moment.

She spoke in the old _dǫnsk tunga_ , only lightly littering her words with English. Like using the English memory instead of _muninn_ , for Odin's raven. Making memory seem more like an internal, human construct than something given by the gods. Only someone who'd lived in both worlds would know and understand the difference. Would use it to make a point.

Even memory Rebekah was far too old to play word games, so she turned her attention completely from Nik to demand, "Who are you?" Because she certain that this woman had _not_ been there. She'd lived this memory enough to know an intruder.

The lady smiled a little harshly, in the way of women who mocked the young maids' naïveté even as they missed it. It could be patronising, but it wasn't. It was pitiless and pitiful at the same time and it made Rebekah's hair stand on end. She'd back away, but her back was already against a tree.

"I am that which was," she said, looking past Rebekah to the circle of mourners still preparing the barge, focusing on Esther, who clutched her chest as though in physical pain and leant against the circle of women. "Foolish woman," the lady murmurred. "She could not steal her favourite from death so she made death pay."

Even the tone of her voice brought chills down Rebekah's spine, far more ancient and knowing and mocking than anything she had ever heard. It was an unnatural voice. She then noticed the markings of her dress as it fell away from the shadow, the runes, the pattern of ash trees, and wells, and looms. "Urðr," she breathed, feeling her long-dead heart beating in her throat. Could it beat in memory? She wildly clutched at the golden necklace around her throat. As if a phantom necklace, a Brísingamen of Freya, could protect her from a Norn.

Goddesses did not appear before anyone anymore. Not even in the tenth century. Not even in a thousand year old memory.

"The time will come for her reckoning, Skuld knows," Urðr said by way of response, "but my business is with the past."

She touched the golden pendant of Rebekah's necklace, who felt the metal grow cold against her skin. "Who gave this to you, child?"

"M-my bróðir Niklaus," she replied, pointedly using the Norse term, "for my last name-day."

"Bróðir, yes," she said with something like kindness. The Norn glanced towards Nik then, who looked beyond all sadness as the invocation of ancestors went on.

"I'm losing him," Rebekah said, though she hardly meant to. Perhaps the Norns had some way of drawing out truth.

Urðr nodded. "You are not losing Niklaus, Rebekah, not in the way that you may think."

Rebekah almost thought that she had been misunderstood, that Urðr referred to their rebirth as vampires before the next full moon. Or even the following centuries of pulling apart and together. Because it was the past, Urðr's terrain. Not the present hybrid/Elena/Esther troubles.

What could she say? The Norns wove fate and did not interfere with its path, and the gods had no control over it. Plead you might, but whatever happened had been settled long before Rebekah had ever been born.

When she looked back towards her brother, she saw another figure beside him, turned into his side though she did not touch. Her long, golden hair gleamed in the pale sun and fell over them both in waves, the curling ends touching the end of her tunic and shielding the young lady's face from Rebekah. Intricate woven patterns and beaten leather straps and vest peaked through her too bright hair. She'd never seen such gleaming hair. The lady seemed to breathe her brother in. Her gaze carressing as she looked him over with some apparent concern, like she knew him, for she lingered over his eyes and his hands, which wrung together uncharacteristically. As if he did not know what to do with them since he'd ran home with Henrik's body the day before.

Nik did not appear to notice the young woman beside him for he kept his gaze resolutely to the ground or to the side away from the crowd of people. Anywhere but the barge. Or her. Or the strange young woman dressed too finely for their settlement. Rebekah could not place her anywhere in her memory. This had not happened, she was sure of it.

The young woman never appeared to notice anyone around them. Her whole being was absorbed by Nik, content to stand here with him, even if he did not notice her presence. She carefully lay her head against his shoulder, as Rebekah had so often done, with some intimacy and comfort. So lightly that Rebekah could not be sure that they actually touched. The hand, perfect and pale and clasped in rings hovered above Nik's hand, as though she ached to touch it but could not. Some barrier there that Rebekah could not see.

When the woman turned slightly, the metal clasps woven into her hair banged together and caught light. Solid gold symbols of Odin: ravens, wolves, his magical spear Gungnir, his ring Draupnir, even the hammer of his son Thor. It had been hundreds of years since she'd since the like, but she'd know them anywhere. A daughter of a witch, she had once trained to be a witch, and she would recognise the ancient symbols anywhere still.

The recognition brought an even colder chill to Rebekah and stilled her breath.

She'd also heard all the stories of the ancients, recited and sung by the bard at her father's hearth. All those sagas with beautiful daughters of Odin riding over battlefields to collect the slain, wearing His symbols so that the dead may know them. The habit they had of loving mortal men. Rebekah loved those stories. She played at being Valkyries with her friends in the village common.

She had wanted to be a Valkyrie. Had once even prayed to see one, just once.

Now, even though it was only a memory, she wanted to flee the scene. Because it could only mean what she never actually wanted confirmed. That Henrik had been taken away to Valhalla with no peace, ever.

Except that it was even worse. It wasn't Henrik that took all the Valkyrie's attention.

The Valkyrie slid one arm around Nik's waist, her hand disappearing into her brother's tunic.

Oh gods, no, she thought, don't take Nik too. Please not Nik. She could bear anything else.

If this were a premonition, she'd fling it back to Urðr and damn the consequences. This fate she would not accept. She'd claw her way to Valhalla with him, scream against its gates until Odin let her in out of sheer exhaustion.

She stepped forward. The smothered crunch of the leaves into the mud beneath her feet caught the attention of the Valkyrie, who looked up sharply into Rebekah's stunned eyes.

Caroline Forbes.

This could not be a real memory.

She must have said the name aloud, though Caroline did not appear to understand it. But, she searched Rebekah's features, as though some part of her recognised dimly.

Rebekah would have spoke again to protest, but only a strangled noise escaped.

Caroline did not speak.

"A Valkyrie only speaks to the slain," explained Urðr.

"That is no Valkyrie," Rebekah responded, shakily. "I know her."

"You know her in one world, Rebekah. The past has many layers and there are many worlds."

Rebekah could not take her eyes from the couple. Caroline's attention had already turned back to her brother. Her troubled eyes watching him, willing him comfort as Rebekah tried to do. In the way that she moved with him. There was an attunement that should not be.

It could not be. Not when Caroline had tried to betray him and kill him, and he would have sacrificed her before his inconvenient infatuation.

She was just an interloper, soon to be forgotten, once she and Nik moved on again.

Caroline hated Nik.

She must have said this aloud too.

"She was called Kàra in Asgard."

"Was?" Rebekah only breathed.

"Many ages ago, in what you would call centuries, though the gods do not measure time." Rebekah heard the Norn dimly behind her, but she could not take her eyes off Caroline and Nik.

Rebekah glanced back at the Norn who watched her too intently. She could hardly take it in. It seemed like a tale that a bard would sing on a cold, winter night. To entertain the women, who cherished a love story. She'd heard it even winter before Henrik's death, and wove a tapestry to hang above her cot, of the moment when Niklaus walked through fire for Kàra.

Urðr continued, "Kàra has loved and lost him before and incurred the wrath of Odin. There is more to the story of Niklaus than you yet remember, Rebekah."

"Are you telling me that Nik, that my brother is _Niklaus_? From the sagas?"

The Norn only raised an eyebrow at her incredulous tone. "Did you think the _Eddas_ were only fairy stories for the amusement of children?"

Rebekah could only gape. She remembered Elijah, and mother, and the bard reciting tales of the warriors and all those Valkyries who loved them, who gave up Valhalla and immortal life for them. She wanted that love. But they weren't supposed to be true.

"How is that even possible?"

"The barrier between Midgard and Asgard was not so firm once." Urðr glanced towards Nik and Caroline again. "There are nine worlds, Rebekah, and in some of them you've already lived and loved and lost Niklaus. There are ties which exist across worlds, and from the strength of those connections you can pierce the barriers between. That is a secret of the gods."

"Why do you tell me this?"

"Because, my dear, you will need this knowledge. Remember," she said, touching again Freya's Brísingamen, "this token, daughter of Freya. In the sacred grove outside of Jórvík, you will remember that you kept it there under the stones in sacrifice."

"I wanted to heal the breach between my brothers, but the gods do not answer the prayers of vampires."

"The gods do not answer to the time of humans or vampires," Urðr clarified. She let go of the pendant and stepped back again, drawing her veil and cloak around her once again. "Use this necklace to call upon Freya when all hope seems lost."

"What do you mean? What will happen?" Rebekah questioned desperately, because all this, the false or revealed memory, seemed too like a portent. There must be more to know. Why else would Urðr appear to her?

"I do not tell futures, Rebekah, that is the realm of my sister. I am bound by the past," Urðr paused, though she seemed kinder, pleading to be understood. "I cannot tell you more than I am permitted."

"Look around you, here in the past where I've brought you. Here is your clue." She took Rebekah's shoulders and made her look again towards Nik and Caroline, Nik still oblivious, almost, though he leaned slightly towards Caroline. He did not know that she was there, but he still leaned towards her, as a plant leans towards it's light source. Steady, natural, without a conscious thought. "Niklaus, son of Loki," she hissed, sparking gooseflesh along Rebekah's neck.

"Loki?" Rebekah breathed. A name forbidden by Mikael long before the truth of Nik's supposed parentage came to light. It was liquid and seductive so much like her bróðir himself. God of mischief, she murmurred, feeling the cold doom slithering towards them even in her memory.

When she turned back towards Urðr, she was gone. So, too, was Kàra/Caroline. Perhaps taking the soul of Henrik with them. Perhaps Caroline had been his Valkyrie.

Her brother looked up to her at that moment, when all the others moved forwards to light the barge. He knew she did not wish to see this moment and he moved towards her finally. She remembered this moment clearly, the last time that she felt close to him as human. Whatever his connection with Caroline, at least she had this. He had never been human _with_ her.

A prayer, an invocation.

And it was done.

Eternity began.

Even as they lit his barge, Rebekah felt eternity claiming them. They hadn't known back then, and she felt sorry for them, and for her past self too. In a precise moment of panic, she felt the forboding of the Norn's words and reached out for Nik's hand, needing to touch him again, to reassure herself of his existence. At least he was okay in her memory and she prayed to Freya to keep him safe from Mother. Wherever he was now.

If the gods ever answered the prayers of vampires.

 _Keep him safe_ , she prayed. She could not add the dreaded name of Loki, though she could feel the silken tendrils of the god's power slithering around their frames, licking at them like flames.

Klaus hand was warm around hers and he tucked her arm into his side, stiffened and protecting her. Like he had once upon a time. She had forgotten how warm he had been.

The flames of Henrik's licked against the water, elements competiting, rendering what was once her youngest brother into the lightest ash to fly high into the clouds, away from Midgard, the world of men, forever.

One harsh shove, two, three, into the Bay where the current would lead him out towards the sea.

It seemed cruel. Such a small thing to be out there all alone.

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 **Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, followed, and favourited!**


	4. Chapter 3: alas my love

**Author's note: Thanks to everyone who has read, favourited, and reviewed. I very much appreciate it. I'll be travelling for work, so the next chapter will not be posted for another 2-3 weeks. Also, from this point on, the story goes AU entirely.**

* * *

 **Chapter 3:** **alas my love**

 _Alas, by what rude fate  
Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet,  
Then part forever on their courses fleet.  
~ Edmund Clarence Stedman, "Blameless Prince"_

* * *

Sometimes, God help her, Caroline thought that she loved Tyler because she was supposed to love him. It was easy, natural, like breathing in the open, clean air after smog. Tyler understood and accepted who and what she was, because he had been there too; there had never been hesitation in that regard, as there had never been in her own acceptance of him. She could see past the bully he used to be, because he had been stripped down to the barest bones of existence, as she had been, and chose the light side.

He _needed_ her, and oh what it was to be needed in this world when she'd only ever been second-best.

The way that he looked at her when he found Klaus's drawing, wounded in only the way that _she_ could wound him. She wished she could take it back and hide the drawing beneath her stack of books or pile of clothes, where Tyler would have never ventured. In all her wishing, it _almost_ never occurred to Caroline to wish that she had never kept the drawing at all.

Like now, when she sat with him on the bleachers of the abandoned gym and he noticed his absent charm bracelet which she had forgotten. _Forgotten._ If that wasn't a sign that something was rotten in the state of Denmark … her thoughts flashed back to the drawing and Tyler's expression. It was the first time she had seriously thought, coherently, that she should not have kept it.

"It's okay, Care," he protested when she fumbled her explanation. "As long as you like the bracelet."

Her eyes dropped to their twined hands. "Of course I love it, Tyler," she said again, eagerly like she had when he had first given it to her. She did love it, and her eagerness did not wholly stem from that drawing and dress and bracelet that she should not have kept. Caroline's lips pursed together in silent self-scolding, because remembering too that curious fluttering in her chest when she first unrolled Klaus's parchment. His idealised portrait of her and thanking her for her honesty, the straining jittery anger yesterday when he ordered her out of his home. But he'd revealed himself to her too, a glimpse of the long-dead past that had formed him.

As if that _should_ matter.

 _I am Skuld_ , that shadowy, foreign voice whispered again in her head, drawing chills down her back. As it had so often since she stood before that old tapestry and listened to Klaus tell her about Norns and fates and world-building.

But Caroline shook her head. She had other priorities, such as quieting the unease of the boyfriend who had declared that he would fight for her. Her heart fluttered at that declaration too.

Such as the fact that Klaus's psychotic mother had herded them together, like cattle for the slaughter. And Matt and Jeremy had gone to help Elena. _Matt and Jeremy_.

Everything else seemed petty in comparison. Even creepy voices in her head.

So, she kissed Tyler because (for the moment) they were together and alive and she could kiss him, and never again worry about an accidental, but fatal bite, to silence any complaint about his missing charm bracelet and to soothe her unintended hurt away. The standard Caroline go-to method with Tyler. Even when she sometimes missed their talking, _really_ talking, when she had just been his friend guiding him through a new existence with hope.

She was here with _him_ and that was all that mattered.

Their 1920s finery looked startling, at odds with the spartan scenery of the abandoned gym. It was a perfect metaphor, she thought, for neither of them fit anywhere anymore. Even when they kissed, alone, almost desperately on those same bleachers like teenagers had always done, it felt like trying too hard. To fit into what they used to be.

She wondered if Tyler felt it too, even after breaking his Sire bond for her. It wasn't that she did not want Tyler. She did, almost as much as he wanted her. She burned beneath his eager, clutching hands, which seemed to need that flesh against flesh for the world to make sense.

But, acceptance did not equate belonging, not matter how hard she willed it. That was the gist of the matter. She still needed to feel that sense of belonging which had been hollowed out since the night of her death. Even as a human, it had been fleeting. For one brief moment before the accident that broke her life into carefully defined sections "before" and "after," she'd felt the stirrings of belonging. When she was just Caroline with a beating heart that Matt had almost loved.

Being needed in the peculiar way that Tyler needed her – helped.

Even if it was difficult to live up to, be the girl for whom someone tortured himself. It was a heady responsibility, smothering, which she both recoiled from and embraced.

But then, _You mark my words … it won't be enough for you._ How Klaus had scolded her for ruining his life. The audacity. That he could even mean it. She wished that she had not believed him. His words muddled her insides until the suffocation returned – which she tried to blot out with Tyler's kisses until she could not breathe and forgot that she did not need to.

She _loved_ Tyler, because he loved her and it was selfish and she was selfish. But, when he pulled her into him and whispered hotly that he'd always need her, it didn't _feel_ selfish at all. Even when she couldn't breathe.

"It would still be …" Tyler began, breaking away from her, his brow furrowed. Even when she had been kissing him, he'd still been thinking of playing the martyr, luring out Esther to wipe out Klaus – and himself. No one had ever really been eager to sacrifice themselves for her, not really, not when they'd been tested – and here was some sort of possiblity. Suddenly, it didn't seem so romantic.

" _Don't_ finish that thought," Caroline scolded him. "Anyone dying is not a best case scenario, Tyler, especially you."

 _Klaus dying too_ , somehow that was not acceptable. When she thought of him the day before, when he had shown her some part of his past, when he had dismissed her. In a flash too quick to be remembrance, she saw him still tracing the lines of that faded tapestry in her head.

 _Do you believe in anything more powerful than yourself, Klaus?_

 _I did once._

 _Did you?_

 _But it has been a long time, love._

He'd lived for over a thousand years. Klaus not existing was somehow not acceptable anymore.

Just a snip and no more, a lifeline cut. It seemed crueller than hell.

Tyler ran a hand through his hair, his hat long discarded on the floor by her feet. "If we just knew that you would be safe," he insisted.

"I don't want a martyr for a boyfriend. That's not what I signed up for," she protested.

"None of us signed up for this."

"I know that, but this is not an acceptable solution." She stood and took his face in her hands, forcing him to look in her eyes. Ever since he bit her and she almost died, he was hesitant about meeting her eyes, even when she told him again and again that it was not his fault. Though now, she suspected that he hated that night for a different reason altogether. But, she could not put that reason into words, and she would not bring up Klaus now between them. "I need _you_ ," she said simply, authoritively.

* * *

Caroline wandered the hallways when Tyler left to check on Bonnie's progress. She had no wish to witness any macho territory contest between Tyler and Klaus, nor did she wish to distract Bonnie. The poor girl had enough pressure with the Salvatore brothers and Klaus breathing down her neck.

She also liked the bit of solitude that the hallways afforded. They were not so omninously big and echoing as the gym, which was filled with too many bad memories of high school events gone wrong. Honestly, why _anyone_ chose this venue, why _she_ chose this venue for the decade dance was beyond her at the moment. Had everyone (including herself) forgotten the absolute magnet the school had become for horrific dance disasters? Seriously, she should have had her head examined for agreeing to it. Even if there would have been less funds for decorations, they should have rented another place. At least, then, perhaps, they would have one high school memory without someone dying.

Unlikely. Given that they lived in Mystic Falls.

Still, a nice thought.

She rolled her eyes at their collective naïveté and tore down a poster urging students to break out their fedoras and flapper gowns for a night of 1920s reverie.

God, didn't that just sound tragic?

She looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps and rounded the corner, hoping that it was Tyler or Stefan with good news.

Instead it was Klaus.

His expression melted into a peculiar form of alluring, almost gentleness.

The ragged poster was still in her hands, so she moved towards the bin (closer to him, but that's not what she was doing, you know? – moving towards him). She missed the bin, which made her face burn. If vampires could blush. Could they? Anyway, clearly, her more concerning problem was that she missed the bin, because – weren't her vampiric skills supposed to prevent that? They usually did.

Except when Klaus was around they seemed to stumble out the door.

He looked down at the crumpled poster and back at her with a smirk on his face.

"Caroline, a lovely surprise as always."

She rolled her eyes. "Hardly a surprise – there are, what, seven people in the entire school?"

"Exactly," he paused, drawing too close to her even though he was still out of arm's length. She noticed the distance, because he was a predator and she was supposed to notice that, you know. He made her nervous. "I was under the impression that you were hiding from me?"

"Hiding? I don't think so," she scoffed, though she had made a concerted effort to avoid where he might be. But that wasn't hiding was it? "I was merely enjoying some alone time with my boyfriend."

"Right."

"What are you doing at a high school dance, anyway, Klaus? Isn't that just a little bit creepy?"

"Rebekah begged me," he replied.

"Creepy," she murmurred again.

"You look stunning," he said, drawing his eyes over her form and choosing to ignore her disparaging remark because it didn't suit him.

He was soo arrogant.

"Don't even," she began to protest.

"Am I not allowed to tell you how beautiful you are, love?"

"No, you are not, especially when you've been walking around torturing and terrorising people."

Klaus paused for a moment, as though weighing his options in how to respond. Then, he smiled in that smarmy way of his, "But I'm not torturing or terrorising anyone at the moment, Caroline."

"Hmph." She bit her lip to keep from smiling at him, because, really, when he chose, it was very easy to forget the monster he was. Even when he said outrageous things. "I told you that I was too smart to be seduced by you."

He seemed to enjoy her reminder, damn him.

She broke his gaze and cleared her throat. "How is the spell going?" she asked, eager for a change in subject. She turned back to the hallway, moving further away from the gym, but also further away from Alaric's classroom, where the Salvatores and Tyler and Bonnie continued their work.

When Klaus fell into step beside her, it occurred to Caroline that she had given him a opening, practically invited him to walk with her and keep her company. Why hadn't she dismissed him? She could have, should have walked away – you know, in the _opposite_ direction. One glance at his profile showed that he realised the same, for his smirk remained, though it was different. He met her eyes briefly, his own glowing with a triumph she did not want to feel and she was certain that she must be blushing again. She did not want to _seem_ that she desired his company, because she did not. Not at all.

She just felt immensely awkward for giving the impression that she did, in fact, want him to stay with her and talk to her. Civilly. Like he had tried to do during the ball and outside the Grill.

"Nothing yet," he replied, irritably, "though I have no doubt that your friend will come through for the doppelganger."

Well, that was charitable – for Klaus.

Their steps echoed too loudly down the corridor and each clip clop rang in Caroline's ears. Their feet were just out of sync, a cacophony of steps that set her nerves on edge that Tyler or _anyone_ would hear them walking together, and come out accusing her of something, though she knew not what. She had done nothing wrong or anything to encourage Klaus. Not really. But the unease that she _could_ do something wrong, that he would do so with her if she allowed it, alarmed her.

They neared the end of a hallway and Caroline led them to the left further away from the gym and classroom, without knowing why or even that she did it. If they kept going, taking lefts, they would circle the whole school and may not even meet one of their party. Surely _that_ was wrong. She shouldn't be alone with him.

"Bonnie is a powerful witch," she said for the lack of anything else.

Klaus was evidently finished with this line of conversation for he did not answer. He seemed entirely content just to walk with her at the moment and stare at her profile, which was strange after their argument yesterday – when he accused her of ruining his life and had thrown a knife and kicked her out, and walked away from her at the dance. Not that she wanted him to do differently.

But she didn't understand him.

"What do you want with me?" she ventured, her confusion creeping into her softened voice. Afraid that anyone may hear.

He stopped and so did she, but he wouldn't look at her now. He looked everywhere else, down the hallway, the ceiling above her head, his brow furrowed in frustration that she just _would not_ understand.

Because she did know, _she did_ , what he wanted with her on some level. How he looked at her. Sometimes, it seemed plain as day. That she brought it up _now_ when they could all be dead soon did not seem to surprise him. Not that he would accept that outcome, not for him or her for, or any of the other vampires at the moment – just to spite his mother. Except, what he wanted with her should not matter to her. Yet, it did – for the both of them – it mattered. Because every time that she saw him or heard him or about him the question rang in her head.

"I want," he began, returning his eyes to her, bluer and serious, like the night she had drank from him and he promised her a thousand birthdays, "to show you what the world could be."

She swallowed, nervously, overcome, because she was just eighteen, and beautiful words still affected her, whomever might say them. But, she could not be affected – with him. It was dangerous. This wasn't a romance novel and he wasn't some grey Byronic hero. "Don't say pretty things to me, Klaus," she replied, irritated by his fall back onto seduction. "You could say it to almost anyone. What do you want with _me_?"

His mouth snapped shut, his jaw working, and he looked away from her. "Will you never believe that I just fancy you, Caroline?"

"What does that even mean?" she asked, frustrated. "I don't know what it means with you."

He ran one hand through his curls, mussing them, and groaned. It was such a normal guy reaction from _him_ that she just stared. "Are you seriously going to have a relationship talk _now_?"

"What?" she exclaimed, "No!"

"Then what are _you_ talking about sweetheart?"

"There would actually have to be a relationship," she continued her train of thought, startled by his choice of words, "in order to have _the_ talk."

Now he stared at her in astonishment.

 _Stop talking, Caroline_ , she scolded herself.

He did not immediately reply, and though his expression retained that strange seriousness that seemed to belong only to her, there was amusement as well. She amused him. He _enjoyed_ her. She'd never been so aware of that fact until this moment she she had been deliberately goading him. "You make me crazy, Caroline," he said.

"Well, _that_ is not a very difficult thing to do," she retorted petulantly.

He narrowed his eyes, and would have said something else, they heard the distant murmurings of Bonnie on the other side of the school, chanting. They could feel the power in it. So, instead of replying, he bowed to her, briefly, like a hero in a Jane Austen novel, and walked away in that direction.

Caroline frowned, feeling as though she had been dismissed, and annoyed by this sudden development between them. _She_ was supposed to be the dismisser. Was that the right word? Was it even a word?

In any case, that was three times in the last two days that Klaus had walked away from her. Twice today, in fact.

And, she _really_ should not be following him.

Damn him.

"Where do you get off saying that I have ruined your life? You are most certainly the villain here. _You_ are the very definition of a villain," she called.

Klaus paused mid-stride, though he did not turn around. "That is quite the delayed reaction, love."

She caught up to him, glaring.

His eyes blazed, clearly relishing the sight of her anger. Even directed at him. _That_ was not indifference, and she knew it. She hated that he knew it too.

"Caroline, love, as much as I enjoy our little spats, I was actually in the middle of something. So, if –"

"What? Scaring Bonnie into fixing your mother?"

He rolled his eyes. "Killing my mother preferably."

Caroline really did not know how to reply. She certainly wanted Esther dead. Permanently – as in not popping up now and then for her own special brand of genocide. Except Esther was his mother. She could not imagine ever getting to the point where she wanted her mother to die, or worse, killing her mother. Nor could she ever imagine dealing with parents who conspired for your demise for a thousand years. She pitied him for that.

It would make him seem more human, if his manner was not so flippant. His manner and tone in the most dire circumstances were too light and off-putting and dangerous. He never reacted as you expected, and though he seemed entirely aware of his effect on people, there was no hint of artifice. The natural predator, a feline grace aware of its attractiveness. Every part of his being played to that advantage.

And yet, he did not scare her now. At least not at this moment. Because he did not wish too. Even after she scolded him and rejected him. She remembered reaching out almost to touch his hand just the day before and how his unexpected vulnerability had moved her inexpressively. She could almost see it in him with his _Perhaps one day_ , and that fleeting moment when he saw her turn the corner just now. That instant his face lightened. It made her breathless.

He moved towards her again and she was still thinking about the peculiar way he looked at her, could see it gliding into his expression again. Fascination. How could _she_ fascinate him?

"Shouldn't you be with Tyler, declaring your undying love in the face of danger?" Caroline almost envied the dripping disdain in that one sentence. No amount of anger or disgust had ever enabled her to achieve that level of disdain in her voice. Yet, his rough, husky tone was especially suited for it. Even that was attractive. That she could recognise that trait as attractive, she would not concede aloud, even to herself.

Still, she rolled her eyes. Because wasting that much disdain on she and Tyler when his mother was still out there free? Sometimes, she swore, Klaus was just ridiculous. It was an uncomfortable, almost affectionate thought that she would never share with anyone, least of all him.

He still moved closer and she hadn't even noticed. His hand suddenly cupped her cheek and tilted her face up to his, and her chin jutted out towards him. She almost thought that he would kiss her, but his stare was still harsh, distant and close at the same time, if that was possible. She didn't know how he could touch her so gently and gaze at her like she was his last drop of blood and mention Tyler in the same breath. She couldn't think about Tyler now. The guilt would eat her up later, but she couldn't think about anyone else with Klaus so close that she could feel his unnecessary breath on her lips.

"I won't kiss you, Caroline, until you ask me too," he said as though he could read her mind. And maybe he had, pulling the flitting images dancing behind her lids. Those dangerous images she did not want to entertain or admit, that frightened her even for their existence.

She hardly knew how they had got from bickering to this. She swallowed and with some semblance of steadiness, she answered, "I'll never ask you too." She still trembled.

"You will," he insisted with an arrogance that would have made her snap, usually. Except now she felt girlish and breathless and _something else_ she did not recognise.

He still smirked, but the corners of his mouth melted into that gentle smile again.

"I won't," she repeated, a little firmer. She hoped her voice was firmer, though she suspected that it was just a breathy and weak as she feared.

"Another time, love," he said, "when I am _not_ so preoccupied." He moved out of her reach and for the third time that night walked away from her. Deliberate, solid steps, assured of himself and his place in the world. Even when his mother was trying to kill him.

He pulled at something inside her. She didn't know, could not _feel_ what it was exactly, except that it disconcerted her. She didn't understand it. She didn't even like Klaus, not really, but she could not dismiss him as she should.

He rounded a corner and disappeared from view, but she still stared after him, trying to settle her thoughts, which she suspected were written plainly across her features. Confusion – like the confusion that Tyler called into question after her dance with Klaus.

She swore that the next time she saw Klaus she would be firm and unaffected and she would tell him to leave her alone forever. She would. Except, the next time she saw him, he saved her and she thanked him and felt his hand against her mouth for days.

Afterwards, much later, when everything was wrecked and she looked back to that moment in the hallway, she could not see it but as fate. Knowing what had been hurdling towards them had made every backwards glance seem somehow sacred – a lost time, an Eden even in all its perils and vampires and witches. Klaus's turning away from her in the hallway was a break in the path already set. Returning to claim his mother's body. Returning to save her. It seemed so incongruous an action. A turn and no more. All out of proportion. Even if it had been the closing of another chapter, the death of another world. And her life arranging itself around another point in time – "before" and "after" Klaus.


End file.
